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Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
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Entries in asia (465)

Friday
Jan032014

i'm working on the world

I'm working on the world,
revised, improved edition,
featuring fun for fools,
blues for brooders,
combs for bald pates,
tricks for old dogs.

Here's one chapter: The Speech
of Animals and Plants.
Each species comes, of course,
with its own dictionary.
Even a simple "Hi there,"
when traded with a fish,
make both the fish and you
feel quite extraordinary.

The long-suspected meanings
of rustlings, chirps, and growls!
Soliloquies of forests!
The epic hoot of owls!
Those crafty hedgehogs drafting
aphorisms after dark,
while we blindly believe
they are sleeping in the park!

Time (Chapter Two) retains
its sacred right to meddle
in each earthly affair.
Still, time's unbounded power
that makes a mountain crumble,
moves seas, rotates a star,
won't be enough to tear
lovers apart: they are
too naked, too embraced,
too much like timid sparrows.

Old age is, in my book,
the price that felons pay,
so don't whine that it's steep:
you'll stay young if you're good.

Suffering (Chapter Three)
doesn't insult the body.
Death? It comes in your sleep,
exactly as it should.

When it comes, you'll be dreaming
that you don't need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it's part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.
Only a death like that. A rose
could prick you harder, I suppose;
you'd feel more terror at the sound
of petals falling to the ground.

Only a world like that. To die
just that much. And to live just so.
And all the rest is Bach's fugue, played
for the time being
on a saw.
 - Wislawa Szymborska  Read more…


Wednesday
Jan012014

in transit forever

They gave him a green plastic transit card. He asked about seeing the world through new eyes.

A kind woman showed him how to slip past metal detectors and immigration.

It is a somnambulistic place. People sit whispering. Ten Europeans, couple of Brazilians, a few Lao. 

Outside the terminal are mountains, gray skies, white clouds.

Pakse is a small southern Lao town known for Khmer artifacts and access to dolphins avoiding dam projects. 

Just go. Go as in walk away. Be in transit forever.

It's simple. Just go. Stand up, start walking.

That's how adventures begin.

The only challenge is never leaving Laos. Never going to a border or exit/entry point. Ever never again.

Stay here forever and a day.

The great man belongs to history.

The great artist belongs to eternity.

Saturday
Dec282013

I wonder

I wonder what would happen if
I treated everyone like I was in love
with them, whether I like them or not
and whether they respond or not and no matter
what they say or do to me and even if I see
things in them which are ugly twisted petty
cruel vain deceitful indifferent, just accept
all that and turn my attention to some small
weak tender hidden part and keep my eyes on
that until it shines like a beam of light
like a bonfire I can warm my hands by and trust
it to burn away all the waste which is not
never was my business to meddle with.

 - Derek Tasker  Read more…

Wednesday
Dec182013

zen mind

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few."

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Sunday
Dec152013

heart sutra

Everything changes, everything passes,
 
Things appearing, things disappearing,
 
But when all is over—everything having appeared and disappeared,
 
Being and extinction both transcended— 
 
Still the basic emptiness and silence abides,
 
And that is blissful Peace.